Boasian Anthropology
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Boasian Anthropology
Boasian anthropology was a school within American anthropology founded by Franz Boas in the late 19th century. Overview Boasian anthropology was based on the four-field model of anthropology uniting the fields of cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, physical anthropology, and archeology under the umbrella of anthropology. It was based on an understanding of human cultures as malleable and perpetuated through social learning, and understood behavioral differences between peoples as largely separate from and unaffected by innate predispositions stemming from human biology—in this way it rejected the view that cultural differences were essentially biologically based. It also rejected ideas of cultural evolution which ranked societies and cultures according to their degree of "evolution", assuming a single evolutionary path along which cultures can be ranked hierarchically, rather Boas considered societies varying complexities to be the outcome of particular historical pro ...
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Gladys Reichard
Gladys Amanda Reichard (born 17 July 1893 at Bangor, Pennsylvania; died 25 July 1955 at Flagstaff, Arizona) was an American anthropologist and linguist. She is considered one of the most important women to have studied Native American languages and cultures in the first half of the twentieth century. She is best known for her studies of three different Native American languages: Wiyot, Coeur d'Alene and Navajo. Reichard was concerned with understanding language variation, and with connections between linguistic principles and underpinnings of religion, culture and context. Biography Reichard received her bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College in 1919 and her master's degree from the same institution in 1920. She started fieldwork on Wiyot in 1922 under the supervision of A.L. Kroeber of the University of California-Berkeley. Reichard attended Columbia University for her PhD, which she earned in 1925 for her grammar of Wiyot, written under Franz Boas. Reichard's field ...
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Ruth Bunzel
Ruth Leah Bunzel (née Bernheim) (18 April 1898 – 14 January 1990) was an American anthropologist, known for studying creativity and art among the Zuni people (A:Shiwi), researching the Mayas in Guatemala, and conducting a comparative study of alcoholism in Guatemala and Mexico. Bunzel was one of the first anthropologists to study the creative process, and she was the first American anthropologist to conduct substantial research in Guatemala. Her doctoral dissertation, ''The Pueblo Potter'' (1929) was a study of the creative process of art in anthropology and Bunzel was one of the first anthropologists to study the creative process."Ruth Leah Bunzel"
''Jewish Women's Archives''
French, B. M. (2005). "Partial truths and gendered histories: Ruth Bunzel in American anthropology", ''Journal of Anthropolo ...
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Elsie Clews Parsons
Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons (November 27, 1875 – December 19, 1941) was an American anthropologist, sociologist, folklorist, and feminist who studied Native American tribes—such as the Tewa and Hopi—in Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. She helped found The New School. She was associate editor for ''The Journal of American Folklore'' (1918–1941), president of the American Folklore Society (1919–1920), president of the American Ethnological Society (1923–1925), and was elected the first female president of the American Anthropological Association (1941) right before her death. She earned her bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1896. She received her master’s degree (1897) and Ph.D. (1899) from Columbia University. Every other year, the American Ethnological Society awards the ''Elsie Clews Parsons Prize'' for the best graduate student essay, in her honor. Biography Parsons was the daughter of Henry Clews, a wealthy New York banker, and Lucy Madison W ...
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Leslie Spier
Leslie Spier (December 13, 1893 – December 3, 1961) was an American anthropologist best known for his ethnographic studies of American Indians. He spent a great deal of his professional life as a teacher; he retired in 1955 and died in 1961.Robert F. Spencer, "Leslie Spier December 13, 1893-December 3, 1961." National Academy of Sciences, 1987, Washington D.C. Spier created a path for the study of cultural change, taking the time to conduct in-depth studies of group contact. His studies focused on changes throughout various cultures over time; he saw great importance in empirical research and made his reports as detailed as possible. Spier’s early years were spent studying the many diverse areas of anthropology ranging from archaeology to physical anthropology. His main interests were studying human relations and analyzing cultural processes among Native American groups. As a teacher, Spier was greatly admired by his students because he was extremely successful in passing alo ...
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Alexander Lesser
Alexander Lesser (1902–1982) was an American anthropologist. Working in the Boasian tradition of American Cultural Anthropology, he adopted critical stances of several ideas of his fellow Boasians, and became known as an original and critical thinker, pioneering several ideas that later became widely accepted within anthropology. Biography Like many anthropologists in the United States at the time, Lesser was Jewish. He studied at Columbia University. As an undergraduate he studied philosophy with John Dewey and did his graduate studies in Anthropology with Franz Boas. His first wife was Gene Weltfish, a fellow anthropologist and Caddoanist. He studied the culture and history of the Pawnee people and other Plains Indians, specializing in the study of kinship among the Siouan peoples. His 1933 work on the Ghost dance among the Pawnee was the first anthropological study of a cultural revitalization movement. Lesser was a critic of the psychological anthropology of Ruth Benedi ...
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Ruth Underhill
Ruth Murray Underhill (August 22, 1883 – August 15, 1984) was an American anthropologist. She was born in Ossining-on-the-Hudson, New York, and attended Vassar College, graduating in 1905 with a degree in Language and Literature. In 1907, she graduated from the London School of Economics and began travelling throughout Europe. During World War I, she worked for an Italian orphanage run by the Red Cross. After the war, she married Charles C. Crawford and published her first book ''The White Moth''. Her marriage ended in 1929 and by 1930, she decided to go back to school to learn more about human behavior. After speaking with Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University, she decided to pursue the field, graduating with a doctorate in 1937. She wrote numerous books on Native American tribes and helped to dispel many myths about their cultures. Life and family Underhill was born in Ossining, New York on August 22, 1883 to Abram Sutton Underh ...
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Melville Jacobs
Melville Jacobs (July 3, 1902 – July 31, 1971) was an American anthropologist known for his extensive fieldwork on cultures of the Pacific Northwest. He was born in New York City. After studying with Franz Boas he became a member of the faculty of the University of Washington in 1928 and remained until his death in 1971. Especially during the earlier part of his career, from 1928 until 1936, he collected large amounts of linguistic data and text from a wide range of languages including Sahaptin, Molale, Kalapuya, Clackamas, Tillamook, Alsea, Upper Umpqua, Galice and Chinook Jargon. He left funds to establish the Jacobs Research Fund, which supports anthropological research in the Pacific Northwest. His papers, including extensive raw linguistic material that has provided the basis for subsequent research on now extinct languages, are held by the University of Washington in the Jacobs Archive. In 2019, the "Melville Jacobs Collection of Native Americans of the American ...
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Gene Weltfish
Gene Weltfish (born Regina Weltfish) (August 7, 1902 – August 2, 1980) was an American anthropologist and historian working at Columbia University from 1928 to 1953. She had studied with Franz Boas and was a specialist in the culture and history of the Pawnee people of the Midwest Plains. Her 1965 ethnography, ''The Lost Universe: Pawnee Life and Culture,'' is considered the authoritative work on Pawnee culture to this day. She is also known for the 1943 pamphlet for the U.S. Army, called ''The Races of Mankind'', which she co-wrote with Ruth Benedict. It was intended to educate military personnel about the cultural differences among the peoples of the world in preparation for their fighting with a variety of allies from other cultures. The authors stated that perceived differences between the races are cultural rather than biological. Among the data used in the text was an IQ study from World War I, which found higher scores among some northern Blacks in the United States for ...
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Melville Herskovits
Melville Jean Herskovits (September 10, 1895 – February 25, 1963) was an American anthropologist who helped to first establish African and African Diaspora studies in American academia. He is known for exploring the cultural continuity from African cultures as expressed in African-American communities. He worked with his wife Frances (Shapiro) Herskovits, also an anthropologist, in the field in South America, the Caribbean and Africa. They jointly wrote several books and monographs. Early life and education Born to Jewish immigrants in Bellefontaine, Ohio, in 1895, Herskovits attended local public schools. He served in the United States Army Medical Corps in France during World War I. Afterward, he went to college, earning a Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1923. He went to New York City for graduate work, earning his M.A. and Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University under the guidance of the German-born American anthropologist Franz Boas. This su ...
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Paul Radin
Paul may refer to: *Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) *Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Christian missionary and writer *Pope Paul (other), multiple Popes of the Roman Catholic Church *Saint Paul (other), multiple other people and locations named "Saint Paul" Roman and Byzantine empire *Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus (c. 229 BC – 160 BC), Roman general *Julius Paulus Prudentissimus (), Roman jurist *Paulus Catena (died 362), Roman notary *Paulus Alexandrinus (4th century), Hellenistic astrologer *Paul of Aegina or Paulus Aegineta (625–690), Greek surgeon Royals *Paul I of Russia (1754–1801), Tsar of Russia *Paul of Greece (1901–1964), King of Greece Other people *Paul the Deacon or Paulus Diaconus (c. 720 – c. 799), Italian Benedictine monk *Paul (father of Maurice), the father of Maurice, Byzan ...
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John R
John R. (born John Richbourg, August 20, 1910 - February 15, 1986) was an American radio disc jockey who attained fame in the 1950s and 1960s for playing rhythm and blues music on Nashville radio station WLAC. He was also a notable record producer and artist manager. Richbourg was arguably the most popular and charismatic of the four announcers at WLAC who showcased popular African-American music in nightly programs from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. (The other three were Gene Nobles, Herman Grizzard, and Bill "Hoss" Allen.) Later rock music disc jockeys, such as Alan Freed and Wolfman Jack, mimicked Richbourg's practice of using speech that simulated African-American street language of the mid-twentieth century. Richbourg's highly stylized approach to on-air presentation of both music and advertising earned him popularity, but it also created identity confusion. Because Richbourg and fellow disc jockey Allen used African-American speech patterns, many listeners thought that ...
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